08/16/2012

Surf at Coronado

Guest blog written by Erike Rogness of Outdoor Outreach

Back to Coronado for our surf trips and I will admit with total bias,
this is one of my favorite locations for
surfing on our trips due to limited amounts of stingrays, the military presence
and the beautiful gold flakes that glitter on the shores in the sun. The waves
are decent and there seems to be a safe and relaxed feeling in the Coronado
environment.

For the most part, this group of MCCS youth were new teens that had not
yet been on trips with us, but I did spot one teen that had been on our very
first trip at Del Mar Beach. I had been
disappointed that she had not gotten to spend more than ten minutes in the
water during that trip. The saltwater in her eyes mixed with the strong current
seemed to be a bit overwhelming for her first surf experience and she opted to see
and learn about marine life up at the tide pools with our instructors instead. Her general personality is fairly easy going
and she could be happy with only a sand bucket on the beach and some water.

As soon as she got off the bus, I could hear her voice telling everyone
eagerly about her ideas of surfing and beach time. We set her up with our
instructor, Greg Drost, who has years of experience working with youth and
youth counseling combined with his silly jokester nature, this was a perfect
fit. Whether it was the enthralling
conversations with Greg, the nice waves, or simply the excitement and
insistence of getting up on a board, the salt water did not seem to be a
consideration that day.

By the time I was able to break away from pushing teens into waves and
talk to her about surfing, she informed me that she was able to stand up and
ride out on waves at least four times already.
The only thing she sounded more enthused
about other than the fact that she spent all day surfing was her need to
inform her older sister immediately of her newly acquired skills. Coming from a family with two older
competitive brothers, I could only grin, relating to the need to always match them.
What better confidence builder than surfing and literally riding out on some
gnar?

We headed in to eat lunch and played some beach games, which mostly
consisted of burying all the teens in deep sand traps, and then watching them
squirm to get out. This particular teen
was having so much fun asking me to bury her with the shovel and building sand
castles, I assumed she was done surfing for the day. Understandably so, surfing
is a full body workout and with the ocean a contact sport for sure. After a full day of surfing, you pretty much
want to eat a thanksgiving dinner and then take a Rip Van Winkle like nap. I
left an MCCS partner staff with her on the beach and headed out with the camera
to take pictures of the teens. When I
turned around, I saw this teen walking toward me with one of our longer surf
boards. “Where are you going?” I asked her. “I’m going surfing, duh!” Duh
indeed.

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